


half a mind

by wanderNavi



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Gen, exploring an idea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26486815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderNavi/pseuds/wanderNavi
Summary: Truth can demand any organ and body part it pleases, including the one floating in your skull.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	half a mind

**Author's Note:**

> I mentally set this slightly pre-canon. Kind of incomplete because there isn’t much to talk about beyond the main incident of the premise.

Once upon a time, Alana prized these shoes for their chic practicality of smooth seams hugging the curves of her feet and supporting her arches for all thirteen miles of extra legwork a wild goose chase sent her off on. She still appreciates the cushioned soles, but the treads have stepped around too many bloodstains and viscera to be anything except grungy and worn down. There are scuff marks scraped all over the toes from clambering up too many brick walls. The other day, Liz glanced down at Alana’s shoes and didn’t even say a word, only looked back up with a skeptical eyebrow raised, to which Alana could only sigh. Yes, these shoes weren’t chic anymore, hadn’t been for a long time.

So when Alana’s boss calls and tells her, “Tenants in 412 Silvenson dropped off a tip complaining about a decomposing smell in Apt. 8. The team that went found a couple dead bodies, suspected transmutation mishap. Go figure it out.” Alana stomps her feet into her shoes with their heels worn down from running and heads over through thirty minutes of smoggy traffic to 412 Silvenson.

The boys blockading the entrance to the apartment from any curious and nosy neighbors let her through easy enough once she shows them her identification. The one on the right of the doorway warns her, “Sorry ma’am. Been having reporters trying to get photographs.”

“Right,” Alana says. “Continue keeping them out.”

She ducks her way past the rope and down the entranceway hall, her feet silent upon the dark cherry-stained hardwood. A sickly-sweet smell clings to the air as the closed windows trap the summer heat of southern Amestris in the cramped living room. With a vague noise of recognition, a man crouching by smears of chalk and absently tapping his sharpened pencil against the pad in his other hand says, “Meyers. About time you got here.”

“Someone tried running a red light and instead caused a four-car pileup right in the middle of an intersection in front of me,” she explains. “What do we have here?”

Brandt stands up and rotates his head on his neck, until the joints all crack and pop. He slips the pencil and pad back into the bag hanging by his side. “Frankly, I haven’t seen this circle before. Not personally. But not hard to figure out either. Here’s the list of things clean up already packed up for evidence.”

Alana takes the ripped off sheet of paper from his outstretched hand and shifts out of the way for a pair lugging a crate stuffed full of dense bricks sometimes fondly referred to as reference books. She counts no less than eight question marks on the list. It’s eight question marks more than she’s ever comfortable seeing alongside words like, “undeveloped heart” and “spine missing final vertebrae and tailbone” and “suspected brain matter.” To improve her mood, someone also scrawled along the left edge of the page, “about eight ounces of hair.”

“Are people ever going to understand that things are taboo for a reason?” she asks the humid air.

* * *

Reading alchemy isn’t the hard part. For simple jobs like slapping a patch on the leaking pipes under Alana’s kitchen sink, anyone can read how to do that.

The hard part is banging your head against a spiked wall for hours until you figure out something new that has any actual value and versatility to be worth the effort, then convincing the government to grant you a patent and get any use out of that patent before the military research labs swoop in like an eagle and firebomb all your work and claims to ownership with an even better version of what you did.

Alana’s never met a more nihilist group of people than the alchemy department at Southern University.

Point being, Alana can connect dots when they’re laid out for her, even if she can’t activate them, and these dots say attempt at human transmutation gone wrong. It’s honestly surprising that this circle hasn’t been declared illegal yet.

The cold of the morgue, in contrast to the heat bearing down on every miserable soul outside, slaps against the bare skin of Alana’s arms. She finds Liz’s lab coat among the racks of spares and temporarily steals it.

After poking her head in two empty examination rooms, Alana finally finds her query. Dr. Adlerson looks up at her knock against the doorframe. “Officer Meyers,” he says. “Come on in.”

“How far along is the autopsy?” Alana asks.

He replies, “Mostly done. I just need to file the report. Nothing much to say. No external wounds, nothing damning in the toxicology reports. Not even the normal discharge wounds from an alchemic backlash.” Dr. Adlerson looks at her nervously through his glasses. “You’re sure he was in an alchemic accident?”

“Yes.” Alana looks down at the body laid out on the metal table between them. One D. Fischer according to the stack of files and photographs tucked under her left armpit. Licensed general practitioner, graduated second rank from Central College’s graduate program. No listed next of kin in any of the seized documents, and only one emergency contact scrawled on the rental lease for the apartment who isn’t responding to any of the landlord’s threats of lawsuits over financial damages to the unit and building at large. Gravity’s left his face pale and chalky.

“Have you examined the evidence we brought in?” she asks.

The doctor blinks rapidly. “The, ah, the mess?”

Accurate enough. Alana shrugs. “We found that in the center of a human transmutation circle. No one else was in that apartment for at least a week before we received the tip.”

He sighs. “So, you found Mr. Fischer collapsed besides what appears to be a human transmutation circle, partially decomposed, and with more decomposed human mater within the circle.”

“Yes.”

“And the reason why Mr. Fischer collapsed besides the circle is because he’s … missing his brain.”

“That’s what we believe.”

“You didn’t find a wayward brain anywhere?” Dr. Adlerson asks with plaintive hope.

She and the team stripped the whole apartment. “Nope.”

He sighs again. Alana tries to not think about the teetering stack of case files she has to go over on her desk and the too-empty status of her outbox.

**Author's Note:**

> how many times can I listen to _Dance of the Knights_ on repeat while writing this.


End file.
